He found Mr.Bright in great grief, for his wife was lying dead in the house.
"There are thousands of homes in England at this moment," said Richard Cobden, "where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger.

Now, when the first paroxysm of grief is passed, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest until the Corn-Laws are repealed." Cobden could no longer see the poor man's bread stopped at the Custom-House and taxed for the benefit of the landlord and farmer, and he threw his whole soul into this great reform.

"This is not a party question," said he, "for men of all parties are united upon it.

It is a pantry question,--a question between the working millions and the aristocracy." They formed the "Anti-Corn-Law League," which, aided by the Irish famine,--for it was hunger that at last ate through those stone walls of protection,--secured the repeal of the law in 1846.

Mr.
Bright said: "There is not in Great Britain a poor man's home that has not a bigger, better, and cheaper loaf through Richard Cobden's labors." John Bright himself was the son of a poor working man, and in those days the doors of the higher schools were closed to such as he; but the great Quaker heart of this resolute youth was touched with pity for the millions of England's and Ireland's poor, starving under the Corn-Laws.
During the frightful famine, which cut off two millions of Ireland's population in a year, John Bright was more powerful than all the nobility of England.